


The White Wolf

by HeavyShoegaze



Series: A Wishlist of Winter [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Jon Snow is King in the North, Kinda, Post - A Dance With Dragons, R Plus L Equals J, Revelations, Robb's Will, Self-Indulgent, probably not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 14:04:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16834087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeavyShoegaze/pseuds/HeavyShoegaze
Summary: After the Battle of the Bastards, Jon Snow and Val must face the lords of the North and unite them against the threat of the Others. Without either Rickon or Arya Stark, though, the task seems impossible.But revelations from the War of the Five Kings and from long before may provide an alternate solution.Or: How I might like to see Jon Snow become King in the North in The Winds of Winter.





	The White Wolf

_Jon stared at Ramsay from across the field. Val rode next to him, sword at her hip, and glared at the Bolton men. She was analyzing their chances, Jon thought with dread, and they were dire._

_Ramsay Bolton rode in front of a large cavalry of Bolton men. Their pikes were sharp and the flayed men on their shields freshly painted, the opposite of Jon's rag-tag wildling army. Behind him, Winterfell burned with the Bolton banners flew, the flags whipping as if in a storm._

_Jon's eyes widened when the Bastard of Bolton brought a small hostage with a sack on his head forward. The burlap sack was yanked off roughly to reveal..._

_'_ _Rickon?' Jon thought with a start. No, that couldn't be right. Rickon was safe in Skagos, away from Ramsay Bolton's knife and Wyman Manderly's schemes and Melisandre's flames. The Onion knight had sworn it... But the boy on the opposite end of the field, the one in Ramsay Bolton's ropes... he looked up and Jon saw Robb's face from his boyhood staring back at him._

_Ramsay Bolton whispered something in Rickon's ear and released the rope. Jon was puzzled at first, then horrified as Ramsay Bolton took a bow and a quiver offered to him._

_"Run!" Jon screamed across the field. "Run, Rickon!"_

_Rickon must have heard his words, for he sprinted as fast as he could away from Ramsay, who took his time notching his arrow and drawing the bowstring. 'He won't make it,' Jon thought with dread. There was only one thing left to do._

_He climbed on his horse and spurred it down the field, ignoring the protests of Tormund and Val and Maege Mormont and all the rest. He saw Rickon run towards him, snowflakes melting in his hair. "Rickon!" he shouted until his voice was hoarse, reaching his arm forwards._

_Rickon sprinted right to him, arrows landing around him. Ramsay was enjoying this, Jon thought with a terrified anger. 'Just a little bit closer,' he thought desperately. 'I'm almost there!'_

_With an agonized shout, Rickon tripped and fell into the frozen dirt, an arrow's shaft lodged into his calf. Jon leapt from his horse to try and shield Rickon, but was too late._

_Another arrow pierced the boy's back and through his heart._

_Jon held Rickon in shock, unable to truly believe it. Rickon's blue eyes - Robb's eyes - dulled as his choked, sobbing breaths gave way to a heart-wrenching silence. Jon looked up to see Ramsay smiling, his eyes shining blue. He gave a signal, and the Bolton army charged._

_Jon watched the army bear down on him, the earth shaking under his feet from the pounding of their horses’ hooves. Their banners that had once been flayed men and winter suns and chained giants were now colored black, torn and flapping in the wind. At his feet lay Rickon’s body, the heat leaving his blood-filled mouth like smoke, his unseeing blue eyes damning him. The blue eyes of the army, unearthly and haunting, never left Jon as the undead soldiers spurred their demon mounts into a sprint._

_Jon reached to his belt and unbuckled it, his numb fingers fumbling around the latch, the blood pounding in his ears. He drew Longclaw from the scabbard, casting the brown leather aside, and held the sword tightly in his hands. The blade was alive in flame, the smoky ripples spell-forged into the glowing steel rolling over each other like waves of blood, the fire snarling a_ _nd shrieking. The flames sparked something alive in his right hand, where the Old Bear’s lantern had seared his flesh._

_Unbidden, the vow of the Night’s Watch came to his thoughts, sardonically whispered by Mance Rayder’s ghost. “Night gathers, and now my watch begins,” The King Beyond the Wall’s low burr whispered into his ear with a dry humor. “It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.” He laughed darkly after he recited every vow that Jon had broken._

_'I am no Oathbreaker,' Jon thought defiantly, as the army fell on him._

_The whistling of a blade in the air and the flash of silvery fur were his only warnings, and Jon jerked just in time to barely avoid the slash. ‘Daggers in the dark,’ Jon thought, but it was not Wick Whittlestick with his jagged knife but rather Bran, holding a smoky blade with a dragonbone hilt. He sat atop Summer, the wolf’s golden eyes peering into his heart. ‘Why?’ Jon wanted to ask, but the words caught in his throat, and Longclaw slipped from his fingers. “For the North,” Bran sobbed, tears falling freely from his eyes._

_“Our honor means no more than our lives, so long as the realm is safe,” the Halfhand’s ghostly voice charged him._

_Jon fell to his knees and Jeyne Poole, who he had promised to protect, stepped to him. Her frost-bitten face was gone, though, and Jon shivered – from cold or fear or pain, he knew not – as the faceless girl drew a short and slender blade in one hand and cupped his cheek with the other. “For the North,” she whispered in Arya’s voice as she stuck him in the heart with the pointy end._

_“Are you a brother of the Night’s Watch… or a bastard boy playing at war?” the Old Bear asked him, though Jon could not find him._

_Sansa, tall and willowy and beautiful, was next, wearing the grey pelt of a wolf across her shoulders. She punched him in the stomach, leaving in him the hilt of a dagger. Jon pulled it free numbly, and the wound smoked in the cold. “For the North,” she sneered, though when Jon looked up it was not Sansa he saw but Lady Catelyn. Her cheeks were clawed with deep black scratches, her skin was curdled a sickly white, her hair was half missing – and what was left was white fragile – and there was a jagged scar that wrapped her neck like a choker. “It should have been you.”_

_‘No,’ Jon thought as the cold wrapped its cruel fingers around his bones. He looked down to Rickon’s body, but all he saw was a head. His blue eyes were unseeing and snowflakes melted in his auburn hair. ‘Robb…’_

_“Kill the boy… Kill the boy, and let the man be born,” Maester Aemon ordered, his ghostly voice strong and commanding where Jon had always known it soft and feeble._

_A shadow fell over him and boots crunched in the snow, and Jon looked up to see a man, tall and stocky wearing leathers and steel and furs. Longclaw was embedded in his heart, its fire snuffed out to a black ash covering the blade. The white wolf pommel had melted, and a red dragon glared at him with a quiet shriek. There was perhaps a half dozen quarrels stuck in him, and Jon’s eyes travelled up his body to the horror on his shoulders. Atop those shoulders was a great grey wolf’s head, its maw fixed in a permanent snarl. There was a quarrel in one eye and a bronze-and-iron crown lay crooked on top. “For the North,” the wolf-man snarled, drawing the sword from his heart and plunging it into Jon’s chest._

_“When winter comes you will die like flies,” Ser Alliser Thorne’s voice spat in Jon’s ear, dripping in disgust and contempt._

_Jon collapsed onto his hands and knees, blood falling and melting the snow. Above him, he heard whispered words… words he’d heard perhaps a hundred times as a boy. “…by the word of Eddard of the House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, for the crime of desertion I do sentence you to die.” Jon looked up again weakly to see his father, Lord Eddard Stark, stand before him, Ice in his hands. He whispered the words with his lips to the pommel of the ancestral sword of the Starks. ‘I didn’t… I’m not an Oathbreaker… I swear…’ Jon wanted to protest as Lord Stark looked at him with a grim condemnation. “For the North,” Lord Stark said coldly, raising the sword high over his head._

_“Ghost,” Jon whispered, as Ice came down on him._

“Ghost,” a voice said sharply. “Ghost!”

Jon felt a rough, wet tongue lick the tears from his eyes and he pulled away, grimacing at the odd sensation. He blinked the sleep away to see deep red eyes staring contemplatively back at him. Ghost nudged him with his nose again, as if to ensure Jon was truly awake.

Jon awoke in the godswood where everything was white. The Godswood had always been a shadowy place. Jon remembered from his childhood the three acres of woods contained within the walls of Winterfell. The trees, oaks and sentinels and ironwood and hawthorn, stood watch as silent guards, their branches and leaves having once covered the Godswood in shadow. As their leaves fell, the sunlight filtered through in greater quantity, sparkling off of the Autumn snows that covered the ground in white.

Val stood next to the great white direwolf. Like Ghost himself, she was clothed entirely in white, from her high boots of bleached leather to her woolen trousers to her thick snow-bear fur cloak. She sauntered up to Jon with a sway in her hips, and Jon had to struggle to keep his eyes from lingering there. He remembered Ser Axell Florent’s crude observations of Val’s hips and breasts. _You fool,_ Jon thought, remembering the grisly fate that befell him after the mutiny at Castle Black. For all of Val’s harsh, graceful beauty, the most defining part of her was the bone knife at her hip, as Florent had learnt.

If Val noticed him staring, she didn’t say.

“Enough, Ghost,” Val said instead, her sternness belied ever so slightly by the trace of a smile in her voice. “I do not think Lord Snow intends to die on us again.” Though she japed, her voice cracked on that last word, and Jon wondered if he was the only one reliving that last battle against the Boltons.

“No I do not,” Jon agreed, and in the almost grateful look in Val’s eyes he found that he meant it. Ghost pressed his nose into Jon’s face again, as if to command him to stay alive. “No, I plan to live,” he repeated, laughing softly and pushing Ghost away.

“Did you sleep well?” Val asked, changing the subject. Jon flushed in embarrassment, reaching for his sword and his washcloth. He hoped his face did not convey the horror of the nightmare, but the look of concern on Val’s face made him think otherwise. She said nothing of it, though, instead taking the sword from Jon’s hand and studying the blade. “Do you miss that pretty sword of yours?” she asked.

Jon nodded sadly. No sword compared to Longclaw. “I must confess that I have grown used to a sword that needs no whetstone. My father had a sword of Valyrian Steel, did you know? _Ice,_ it was called. It was as tall as me and as wide as my hand.”

“What happened to that sword?” Val asked.

“He took it South, and like him, it never returned,” Jon said sadly. “I miss Longclaw, but it belongs to Lady Mormont by rights. I couldn’t keep it, not like the Lannisters did to my family.”

“A pity. A pretty boy like you deserves a pretty sword,” Val smirked. Her blue-grey eyes darted meaningfully down Jon’s body, and Jon cursed internally as his face heated up. “Oh, Jon Snow, you blush like a pretty little maiden!” Val laughed, sitting on his lap and taking a curl of his hair around her finger. Jon struggled to keep his eyes from the swell of her arse in those white trousers.

“I’m not a maiden, nor am I _pretty_ ,” Jon protested weakly. “I scaled Winterfell's walls and took the castle as no man has ever done before. What girl can say that?”

“Me. I leapt after you,” Val said dryly. There was a great meaning behind those few words. _‘You know nothing, Jon Snow,’_ Ygritte’s voice whispered disappointedly in his ear. _I know some things_ , Jon thought petulantly. Valseemed uncomfortable with the sentimentality, and she changed the subject. “This is a lovely castle of yours,” she observed.

Jon felt self-conscious at her words, more aware than he wished of the damaged towers and burned stone, of the red scars in the weirwood heart tree where Ramsay Bolton had cruelly cut into the bark with his axe and the sap had spilled out, hardening in the cold. “It wasn’t always like this,” Jon protested. “I hope you see Winterfell one day as I knew it.”

“I will not,” Val said, continuing at Jon’s startled look. “What I mean is that Winterfell will never be the same, and neither will your family. Damaged, burned, betrayed, violated, Winterfell endures. _The Starks_ endure.” Val pulled a bundle of fabrics and handed them to him. “What Ramsay Bolton destroyed, Wun Wun can rebuild. The Starks remain, though, through you.” Jon unfolded a black cloak, much like his father had worn. Instead of a fox across the shoulders, a white snarling wolf fur was stitched on top.

Jon smiled as she tied the cloak around his shoulders. Jon felt a soft warmth envelop him, though whether because of the cloak or her hands he did not know. “Should I be worried for Ghost when you desire to make another cloak?”

“At least Ghost would not be so easily stolen,” Val replied, patting the wolf affectionately. “See the other cloth too.”

It was a black banner, one like the banners that flew over Castle Black. But when Jon unfolded the fabric, he saw a white direwolf with bright red eyes snarling at him. “You told me that you are not a Stark,” Val said, “and you were partially right. You are not your brother nor your father. But you are a wolf… you will always be a wolf.”

Jon stared at the banner. He had never dared to bear the sigil of his father – not as a bastard. But a white wolf? Flying over the walls of Winterfell? _I want it_ , Jon thought. _Lady Stark was right. I want it._

“There is one other thing,” Val said absentmindedly. “I always wondered why you never stole me.” Jon choked a cough. Why her forwardness still pulled that reaction, he did not know. Even still, Jon averted his eyes from her questioning gaze, feeling his face flush again. Val took his cheek in her palm and tilted his face up to look at her. “I know you wanted me, much as I wanted you. You had no lack of opportunity.”

“I was a sworn brother of the Night’s Watch,” Jon insisted. _Was_ , the voice in his head emphasized darkly.

“And after?” Val prompted. _After Bowen Marsh carved those vows from you with his dagger_ , went unsaid but not unheard.

“I…” Jon hesitated. Why had he not stolen Val? The answer was simple enough – Jon was not one to put a knife to a woman’s throat and take her against her will. But he’d always rebuffed her advances and suggestions… _why?_ Perhaps it was Ygritte, Jon thought. She’d demanded he promise to never love another, and Jon unconsciously crossed his legs when he remembered how she’d punctuated her threat by pointing her knife at his cock.

Though Ygritte would never get to make good on that promise – Jon had made certain of that.

Was it his vows that kept him from stealing into Val’s bed? Jon hadn’t held much stock in his vows when he cast his black cloak aside and marched down to Winterfell.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Val said, at his silence. “You loved Ygritte, and perhaps I loved Jarl too. It is too much to ask for you to forget her.”

Jon wrapped a tentative arm around Val’s hips. She looked at him almost incredulously when instead of taking her right there, he brought up his father.

“Did I ever tell you how my father became the Lord of Winterfell?” Jon asked her.

Val rolled her eyes and shook her head. “His father was a Lord?” she asked dryly.

“Aye, My grandfather, Lord Rickard, was the Lord of Winterfell. But my father was not destined to hold this castle. That was my uncle, Brandon Stark,” Jon laughed.

“Was your brother not named Brandon?” Val pointed out. “How many Brandon Starks are there?”

“Hundreds,” Jon laughed. “Thousands. Old Nan used to say that every generation of Starks had a Brandon Stark. I should bring you into the crypts one day, so you might see how many! But as I was saying, Uncle Brandon was the heir to Winterfell. According to my father and Ser Rodrick, Uncle Brandon was the opposite of my father; handsome where my father was plain, reckless where my father was quiet, dashing where my father was dour… All the girls loved him and everyone was always so proud of him.”

“He sounds like your brother, Robb,” Val said, realizing Jon’s point before he did.

“Aye, he was,” Jon conceded with a strained smile. “Uncle Brandon and my Grandfather were murdered by the Mad King, and my father was forced to become the Lord of Winterfell. He raised the banners of the North and marched South to war to get justice for his family.”

“I’ve met this man,” Val smiled.

“I guess I am my father’s son,” Jon laughed softly. “But I wanted to tell you how he met his lady wife, Catelyn Tully.” Val raised a single eyebrow, and Jon took it as invitation to continue. “Lady Catelyn was to marry Uncle Brandon, but when he died my father married her in his stead. He had been in love with another, like she was. She loved Uncle Brandon, and my father loved the most beautiful woman in the world, Ashara Dayne. But in order to win the war against the Mad King, he needed Lord Tully’s armies. So, he married Lady Catelyn.”

“Tis a tragic story,” Val noted.

“But though neither of them intended for their marriage, though they married for an army and not for love, my father and Lady Catelyn _did_ come to love each other. They built a family and a home here, when it was uncertain whether there would ever again be Starks in Winterfell.”

“You are your father’s son,” Val said, leaning to press her temple against his. Jon closed his eyes and basked in her warmth before speaking.

“I think we could do that,” Jon finished. “I know not what may happen to Winterfell, not without Sansa or Arya or Bran or Rickon. Alys Thenn may claim distant kinship to the Starks, though Wyman Manderly is better armed,” Jon muttered into the top of Val’s honey-blonde tresses. “And Justin Massey was promised Winterfell by Stannis, and we do owe him out lives...”

“But whatever should happen, wherever we go, we will do it together,” Val said. She took his cheek in her hand and gently pressed her lips to his.

Kissing Val was different from what he had expected. After Stannis had offered him Winterfell, Jon had tried to picture taking Val for a wife. Would she hate him? Would she fight him whenever he slipped under her furs?

The swipe of her tongue along the seam of his lips answered those questions. She was strangely… _soft_. Certainly not as bony and angular as Ygritte had been, Jon noticed as he pulled Val on top of him. Her hips were more substantial, as was her chest pressed against him. It was her lips, though, that surprised him the most. Ygritte had kissed as she lived – a wildling spearwife plundering his mouth with her tongue. Val, though, kissed almost softly and encouragingly, gently gasping as Jon’s hand trailed down her sides. Her thumb slowly traced the faint scars under his eye, rubbing the memory of the pain away.

“You wrapped me in a cloak and kissed me under a heart tree,” Jon said as they broke apart, her forehead pressed against his. He nuzzled her softly and though she rolled her eyes and huffed, Val did not pull away. “Some would say that makes us man and wife.”

Val smirked and pulled her bone dagger, pressing it to his neck. Jon eyed the blade warily, hoping he had not overstepped. “Perhaps that suffices for you kneelers, but I still expected to be stolen.”

“Val…” Jon rasped nervously, his eyes never leaving the blade.

“I suppose I will have to steal _you,_ then,” Val drawled, as if it was some great burden she had undertaken. “For I intend to keep you, King Crow.”

“You need not bother, for I am yours, and you are mine,” Jon agreed, pushing her knife away and kissing her again. Her disaffected look was belied by a warm smile against his lips. _From this day until the end of my days_.

Maege Mormont was the first to approach Jon at the high table. He had Longclaw between her hands, and with perhaps less grace then one would expect of a woman holding her family’s ancestral sword. As she dropped the sword unceremoniously on the table in front of Jon, he noted that the pommel had been shaped back into a wolf.

“Lady Mormont… I couldn’t possibly…”

“My brother gave you that sword,” the old Lady of Bear Island interrupted him sharply. “Don’t you dare lose it again.”

Jon wanted to protest, to tell her to keep it, but Maege Mormont was not a woman to be trifled with. “Thank you, Lady Mormont,” Jon said instead.

Maege nodded curtly and turned to Val, who was seated next to him. She eyed Val carefully before speaking. “You’re certainly no Southron lady,” she barked. Val nodded slowly, a small smile on her lips. “Good. There’s something about the men in his family that leads them to their deaths too early. He will need a good woman to keep him alive.”

“Aye, that’s a hard task for any woman,” Val said airily, though the way she grabbed Jon’s thigh under the table betrayed her true feelings.

Tormund gave Val a lecherous grin. “Have you stolen the lad yet?” Tormund asked her. Val just smirked back, running her thumb over Jon’s knuckles under the table. “Good. A pretty boy like that, Toregg might have stolen him first!”

Jon shook his head fondly, though his stomach roiled with nervousness as he surveyed the Great Hall of Winterfell. The rest of the Lords had seated with their men in an uneasy silence. Lady Dustin and her late husband’s men, Eddara Tallhart of Torrhen’s Square, Wyman Manderly, Galbert and Robett Glover, even the Crannogmen – Blackmyres and Boggs, Peats and Crenns, Creys and Quaggs and Greengoods – led by Lord Howland Reed of Greywater Watch. Alys Thenn and her husband sat in the middle, next to Eddara Tallhart, who asked the Lady of Karhold what it was like, taking a wildling as a husband. _Perhaps she could be persuaded to do the same,_ Jon thought. _It would help bring the Free Folk into the fold._ Wun Wun was the only giant present, and he barely fit, crouching under the doorframe and holding his one good arm awkwardly.

The GreatJon and Tormund Giantsbane eyed each other warily, and Jon remembered for how long the Umber men fought against the Free Folk. Sure enough, the GreatJon rose to his feet first. “You cannot expect us to sit with wildling invaders!” he spat.

“We didn’t invade,” Tormund retorted. “We were invited.”

“Not by me,” the GreatJon huffed. “I never thought I’d see some wilding whore sit where Ned and Cat Stark once did,” he sneered at Val.

“And I never thought I would see Stark bannermen bend to the Boltons, to the Lannisters,” Jon shot back angrily. The GreatJon glared at him, but Jon did not back down. He calmed his voice, though. “But you still remained loyal to House Stark in your hearts, just as did all of us. Tormund Giantsbane and Wun Wun and Sigorn of Thenn and Val also fought for me, for House Stark. My father used to say that we find our true friends on the battlefield…”

“So you mean to claim your father’s seat?” Lady Dustin asked. “Over your own sister?” She looked to Jeyne Poole and Beth Cassell.

“I am not Arya Stark,” Jeyne said tearfully under Lady Dustin’s harsh gaze. “My name is Jeyne Poole, daughter of Vayon Poole.”

“My father’s steward,” Jon clarified. “Ramsay Bolton never married my sister. I know not if she even lives.” _She has to live,_ Jon thought desperately. 

“So who did we fight for, then?” a voice asked from the Tallhart men. “A _bastard?_ ”

Jon looked to Davos Seaworth. _Rickon Stark yet lives_ , Jon wanted to say. _My littlest brother calls Skagos his home, runs with shaggy unicorns and cannibals. It was his wolf’s head you saw, but Rickon did not share Shaggydog’s fate_. But Davos’s imploring gaze stilled his tongue. What happiness Rickon had found on that forsaken island, Jon could not say, but the Onion Knight had thought it cruel to take him from his new home. “Aye,” Jon said instead. “You fought for a bastard. Does that trouble you, my Lords?”

“Winterfell is not yours, bastard!” someone shouted. There was a chorus of aye’s, and Jon winced at the reaction. He looked to Justin Massey, who nodded along. The knight had been promised Winterfell, and had as much claim to the seat of the Starks as Jon.

That is to say, none.

“Debating who helps themselves to my father’s home does us no good, not when the true enemy marches South. Not when Winter comes,” Jon said, raising his voice over the din of dissent.

“What _true enemy_?” Lord Cerwyn asked disbelievingly.

“The Great Other, friend. The Long Night approaches, and all the living North must band together if we are to survive,” Jon said gravely.

“Those are but stories,” Cerwyn snorted.

“You kneelers have gotten too used to hiding behind your Wall,” Tormund laughed. “In the true North, monsters that would make your worst nightmares seem like a Southron maiden’s dreams dwell in the Lands of Always Winter.” He gave the Northern Lords a cruel smile. "They'll come for ye in the night, and steal that warmth away for good."

“You don’t believe him,” Davos Seaworth said. “I don’t blame you. It sounds like madness. But the dead can walk, I’ve seen it myself. It is not merely chance that brought Jon Snow to his father’s seat but destiny. He was named Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, he led the armies to retake Winterfell, not because of his birthright. He has none, he’s a damn bastard!”

“My lords,” interrupted Howland Reed. Jon was grateful for the distraction. The little Lord of Greywater Watch stood with great effort, clutching his side. One of the other crannogmen rushed to his side, bracing him as he addressed the men in the room. “I would speak, if you would listen.”

“Where were you?” Lord Glover sneered. “When Robb Stark went to war, when the Ironborn pillaged our homes… where were you, Crannogman?”

“I would have been proud to die with Ned,” Howland said painfully, “or to die for his son. But I fear the wound from Oswell Whent’s blade still cripples me today.” He winced again, but he refused to sit down. Jon flexed his burned hand; he understood the courage it took the Crannogman to stand before his countrymen.

“You fought alongside my father during the Rebellion,” Jon remembered, the name of the knight of Aerys’ King’s Guard. “You were there when he slew Ser Arthur Dayne in single combat in Dorne.” For a moment, Jon forgot the eyes of the Northmen on him. “He never spoke of that day, at least not that I can remember. Robb and Bran and Theon and Arya would beg him to recount how he bested the greatest swordsman who ever lived, but he would never tell me the tale.” Jon smiled wistfully. “I used to wonder if it was because Ser Arthur’s sister was my mother.” _Lady Ashara Dayne_. Wishful thinking, Jon knew now. “What boy didn’t dream of being a secret Dayne? Of being worthy to wield Ser Arthur’s Sword?”

Howland Reed looked queerly at Jon for a moment before speaking. “Dayne spared Ned’s life, did he tell you?” He looked around at the other Northmen, at Wull and Glover and Lady Barbrey Dustin. “I watched Ser Arthur Dayne cut through the finest warriors of the North like they were green boys made of butter. Theo Wull, Ethan Glover, Ser Mark Ryswell, Ser Martyn Cassell, even together they had not a snowflake's chance in Dorne against him. But when Dayne had Ned on his back, he could not bring himself to take Ned’s life. One last man who loved Lyanna Stark… and died for it,” he said wryly. Howland Reed’s mossy green eyes darkened slightly, and Jon realized with a cold dread what he meant to say. “Dayne let Ned live, and when Ned got to his feet, he returned the favor with a dagger in the back.”

That revelation did Lord Reed no favors, as the Northern Lords got to their feet and started shouting. Wyman Manderly in particular cursed the Crannogman for his slander. Only spiteful Lady Dustin seemed to accept Eddard Stark’s dishonorable deed.

“Is that why you have come here, my Lord?” Jon asked sharply over the din of the Northmen’s protests. “To cast dirt on the honor of my father? A pity you were not in Joffrey Baratheon’s court, else you might have aided the boy King when he falsely executed my father for treason.”

“I only come to speak the truth,” Lord Reed returned, hiding his weakness. “For seventeen long years have I held a secret, the gravest secret, and may Ned forgive me but I will not let it die with me as he would have done with him. I can only beg of you to hear my words in full, so you may know in truth what the Realm has never known save for lies. I can only beg your forgiveness for what Ned and I have done, for what we have taken from you. I would tell you the truth of your mother, Jon Snow, if you would listen.”

Jon froze. He looked to Val in disbelief, unsure what to say. She merely shrugged, as if to say, _what have you to lose?_

 _My father’s honor_ , Jon thought. He could not bear the thought of another stain on his father’s reputation, not after the truth of Ser Arthur Dayne’s death.

But his father never told him one word of his mother. _I may never get the chance to learn her name_.

Jon nodded, bidding Lord Reed to continue.

“My tale begins in Harrenhal, when Walter Whent held his grand tourney. All the realm was in attendance, from the Mad King and Prince Rhaegar to the Lords of all the great houses, save for the Lion of Casterly Rock. I had travelled to the Isle of faces before the tourney, and though my people never had a place among the knights of the South, I could not help myself from partaking in the pageantry and festivities.

"But not every Southron believes the Crannogmen have a place among the realms of men. Three squires accosted me, beating me bloody while others watched.

“It was a she-wolf who came to my aid – Lyanna Stark, Lord Rickard’s daughter. She beat them off with a tourney sword and took me to the Stark tent to bind my wounds. The Starks, Brandon, Ned, Lyanna, and Benjen, they gave me clean clothes and all but demanded I sit with them at the first feast.” As Howland paused, choked with emotion, Jon remembered Samwell Tarly in Alliser Thorne’s training yard. Perhaps he was more of a Stark than he had thought.

“What happened to those squires, though?” Lord Cerwyn asked, curiosity getting the better of him. The other Northmen seemed equally enraptured in Lord Howland’s story, and Jon could not begrudge them. Anything was better than them fighting over his father’s home.

“I would have gutted the runts in their sleep!” Tormund declared loudly and derisively, and Jon wanted to roll his eyes. Tormund would have butchered them for daring to spit in his direction. A small crannogman, though, had reason to be apprehensive of seeking justice on his own.

“I recognized them at the first great feast,” Howland Reed replied. “They served the knights of Houses Haigh, Blount, and Frey, the ones who had won their tilts that morning. I remember that day as if it were yesterday, the way I burned with humiliation as they pranced around, enjoying the feast as if they had not nearly killed me just a few hours before. I prayed that night, to the old gods of my father and his father before him, that some hero would remember the offense dealt to me and deal justice on those unruly squires. And the next day,” he paused with a smile, “a mystery knight took the field.”

“The Knight of the Laughing Tree!” Lady Dustin remembered, her eyes widening. “I remember him!”

“Yes, the Knight of the Laughing Tree,” Howland Reed confirmed. “He was a small knight, in mismatched armor with a laughing weirwood on his shield, but he took rode to the knights and challenged them all. The Gods gave his arm strength and he cast all three knights down to the ground. When they approached to ransom their armor and horses, the mystery knight asked not for glories or coin. ‘Teach your rude squires honor,’ he said in a booming voice, ‘and that shall be ransom enough’!” Lord Reed had a wide smile. There were a few cheers for the Knight of the Laughing Tree, and out of the corner of his eye Jon saw Val shaking her head at all these Southrons and their silly games.

“Who was the mystery knight?” Jon couldn’t help but ask. “Was it my father?”

“Your father was in attendance when the Knight of the Laughing Tree rode his three jousts,” Lord Reed answered evasively, another queer smile on his lips. “It wasn’t Ser Brandon Stark either, he had ridden with his family’s sigil on his shield and fell to the Dragon Prince the day before. It wasn’t Ned – he never cared for the frivolities of tourneys. Even as a boy he was grim and humorless.” Whoresbane Umber laughed out loud at that. “And it wasn’t the Wolf Pup, your Uncle Benjen, though he did help the knight piece together his armor from borrowed bits and pieces of other knight’s arms.

“No, it was a different Stark who rode in my honor, with a weirwood on her shield and a crannogman’s token wrapped on her arm.”

“The girl, Lyanna Stark,” Val said, smiling softly. “She felled those knights.”

Maege Mormont, who did not seem to enjoy this story as much as the rest – the Mormonts stopped caring for tourneys after their former lord won the hand of his wife at Lannisport – grinned as Howland Reed smiled. Lyanna Stark’s valor earned several cheers from the seated Northmen, and Jon thought of his sister, of Arya. _She would have loved that story_.

“This is a lovely story, Lord Reed, but what did it have to do with my mother?” Jon asked.

“Everything,” Howland Reed replied. “You see, not everyone was so impressed with the Knight of the Laughing Tree. The Mad King saw the mystery knight as an enemy and commanded his son to bring him to face the King’s Justice.”

Everyone but the Free Folk shared a grimace at the mention of Mad Aerys’ _justice._

“So Prince Rhaegar and Ser Arthur Dayne searched for the mystery knight. But despite their best efforts, all they found was the knight’s shield, hanging from the branches of the heart three of Harrenhal. But my Lords,” Howland said, a fervor in his eyes as he tried to remain standing. “My Lords, that was _not the truth_. Prince Rhaegar did find her, as we would later learn. He found a young woman frantically trying to get rid of the armor, and he and Ser Arthur agreed to keep her secret, to shield her from his father’s madness. And when he won the joust, when he unhorsed Arthur Dayne and Barristan the Bold, Prince Rhaegar was given a crown of winter roses to give to any woman in the Realm. And he remembered the wild, beautiful Lyanna Stark, and her chivalry and courage.”

“But…” Jon said quietly. _He kidnapped her… raped her._

“Perhaps that is where it began,” Howland Reed mused. “Perhaps it was her bravery, her sense of justice that made the Prince fall in love with her. But fall in love he did, as did Lady Lyanna with him.”

“She loved him?” Jon asked, trying to follow. “So she went with him willingly?”

“Aye, she did, Jon Snow. We learnt long after that Prince Rhaegar married her on the Isle of Faces, took her as his second wife like the Targaryens of old. What led Brandon Stark and Rickard Stark to their deaths, what led Robert to put his warhammer through Prince Rhaegar’s chest on the Trident… it was a lie.”

“But, what does that have to do…” Jon’s voice stopped in his throat, for the truth was too terrible to bear. He looked around to see the other Northmen, to see understanding slowly dawn on them.

“We did not expect Hightower, Whent, and Dayne at that tower,” Howland Reed said, rubbing at the healed wound on his chest. “If we had, we might have come with a thousand men. Maybe then we might have stood a chance against the Sword of the Morning. We thought they would have sailed to Dragonstone, with the Queen and King Viserys. But Gerold Hightower, the Lord Commander of the King’s Guard… he did not even call Viserys his king. That should have been our first clue that something was wrong.” Howland Reed shook his head. “But when Ned raced up the stairs, he found Lyanna dying in a bed of blood, a baby boy in her arms.”

Jon felt as if the world had collapsed around him. There was not a Northman in the room who did not know what Lord Reed was about to say next.

“She said the babe’s name was Jaehaerys, the Third of His Name of the House Targaryen, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. And with her dying breaths, your mother bid Ned to protect you from Robert’s wrath.”

“Gods…” Justin Massey swore, breaking the stunned silence. He stared at Jon, trying to see Rhaegar's blood in him. “The rightful king?”

“Do you mean to say that Ned’s bastard was the rightful king?” Barbrey Dustin asked him archly. “That my brother and my husband died in Dorne for naught?”

Immediately, GreatJon Umber got to his feet, roaring in anger. “The dragonspawn were dead! Robert Baratheon saw to that! We went to war to avenge Rickard and Brandon!” He pointed his ugly greatsword at Jon, and his men started shouting their protests. Jon might have ordered him to sit down, but he was still numb from Howland Reed’s words.

Quick as a flash, Ghost bounded between Jon and the irate lord of Last Hearth. Jon Umber dropped his sword as if stung, and Jon caught sight of stumps on the GreatJon’s hand where two of his fingers should have been.

“You cannot expect us to bow to a dragon!” Glover spat. “A bastard is one thing, but a dragon? Mad Aerys’ get? No. Never!”

Jon vaguely registered Lords Cerwyn and Manderly voicing their own objections. Tormund shouted back at Lord Umber and Eddara Tallhart, and Wun Wun roared something in the Old Tongue. Jon wanted to say something, wanted to order everyone to calm down, but all he could think about were Lord Reed’s words. _Eddard Stark was not my father. He lied to me. Every day, every moment, he lied!_ ‘You may not have my name, but you have my blood,” Lord Stark had told him once, when he was a small boy and he had just learned what it meant to be a bastard. Never had he said, ‘you are my son.’ _It was all a lie. Everything._

Jon felt his throat tighten, hearing the shouts of the Lords and the Free Folk. He thought of his dream against the weirwood, of Bowen Marsh and Wick Whittlestick and all the others with their daggers in the dark and he couldn’t breathe. Jon felt the scars on his stomach and his chest burn and he could feel the cold hold his bones again. _For the North. For the North. For the North-_

“You kneelers and your obsession with names,” Val said sharply, taking Jon’s hand tightly under the table, grounding him. “What do we care of who sired Lord Snow? Did he not fight sword in hand beside you, under your cloth flags?”

“Only a Stark has the right to carry the direwolf banners. He is no Stark,” Robett Glover snarled, “but a Targaryen!”

“His mother was a Stark,” Maege Mormont pointed out, rising and moving to stand before Jon, facing the rest of the Northern Lords. “Would you say that my own daughters are Mormonts or bears, Robett?” Robett Glover made to respond, but his elder brother cut him off, bidding Lady Mormont to speak. “I did not bring Howland Reed to tell that tale, but rather a different one. One more recent.” She pointed to Longclaw, laying on the table in front of Jon. “My brother trusted Jon Snow, or Jaehaerys Targaryen if that is his true name, with my family’s sword. With the command of the Night’s Watch. And he was right to do so. Stannis saw something in Jon Snow, why else would you fight for him?” she asked Davos Seaworth and Justin Massey. “Mance Rayder, the King-Beyond-the-Wall, trusted Jon Snow with the safety of his people.” She looked to Tormund. “Was he right to do so, Giantsbane?”

“King Crow died for us,” Tormund agreed. His sons and the Free Folk pounded their feet and cheered behind him. “You Southrons cut those vows of his in the night, with your daggers and your lies, but we remember.”

“Aye, the North Remembers,” Maege continued. “Is that not what we said, Galbert, Jon? _The North Remembers_. When Robb Stark wrote his will, when he died, when it fell to us to avenge him, we said _the North Remembers_. How many of you forgot those words, forgot House Stark in their hour of direst need?” Maege pulled from her cloak a scroll of paper, with the wax seal of a wolf. She looked to Lord Glover, who nodded grimly, and to the GreatJon, who was less convinced, and she walked over to Jon, handing him the paper. “I served Robb Stark proudly, but he trusted too freely, I can admit that. He trusted Theon Greyjoy, he trusted Sybill Spicer, he trusted Roose Bolton, and he trusted Walder Frey. I thought he was a fool to trust you too, but I can see that I was wrong.”

Jon reached for the scroll, taking the delicate paper in his hand. He saw the GreatJon hold something in his arms, but his vision was getting blurry. He swallowed heavily, grateful that Val took the will from her hand. She broke the seal and read the contents, her eyes widening. She thrust the paper back into his hands, bidding him to read it.

Reluctantly, Jon took the scroll and read it aloud.

 _“I, Robb Stark, Lord of Winterfell and King in the North, hereby release my father’s bastard, Jon Snow, from his vows to the Night’s Watch and name him my legitimate heir,”_ Jon froze for a minute, his mind unable to comprehend it. The words on the paper blotted from his tears as he continued.

 _“Should I fall without issue, in battle or in bed, Jon Stark shall hold my lands, bear my titles, keep my castle, and carry my banners as the Lord of Winterfell… and the King in the North,”_ Jon choked back a sob as he read his cousin’s – no, his brother’s – words. It was Robb’s messy scrawl, of that he could be certain, if the seal was not proof enough of its authenticity.

“House Mormont remembers. _The North Remembers._ We know no King, but the King in the North whose name is Stark,” Lady Mormont said resolutely. “I don’t care if he’s a bastard or a Targaryen. Ned Stark’s blood runs through his veins. He’s my king, from this day until his last day.”

The Mormont girls bent their knees, and the Great Hall stilled as everyone processed her words. Jon froze, every protest in the world on the tip of his tongue.

“I would always kneel to Lyanna’s son,” Howland Reed said, intoning an old, sacred oath. The crannogmen, all of them, knelt and recited it with him. “To Winterfell I pledge the faith of Greywater. Hearth and heart and harvest I yield up to you, my King. Our swords and spears and arrows are yours to command. Grant mercy to our weak, help to our helpless, and justice to all, and we shall never fail you. I swear it by earth and water. I swear it by bronze and iron. I swear it by _Ice and Fire_.”

“Jon Stark gave me refuge,” Alys Thenn said with her husband, “when no other man dared defy my cousin and my uncle. I would have proudly died for you against the Boltons, and I will proudly stand for the King in the North!”

“The King in the North!” Sigorn of Thenn agreed, raising his giant knife to the roars of approval of the Thenns.

“My son died for Robb Stark, the Young Wolf,” Wyman Manderly spoke next, the Merman of White Harbor who had abandoned both Roose Bolton and Stannis Baratheon, for he could not serve anyone but the Starks of Winterfell. “I never thought I’d see another King in the North, not in my lifetime. I hoped that Rickon Stark might hold the North as his father did, but without him... I thought the Starks were finally gone from this world.” There was a hum of agreement from his side, until Lord Manderly silenced them with his next words.

“But I was wrong!” Lord Manderly looked around at the other Northmen, at Lords Umber and Glover especially. “I was wrong.” He drew his sword and pointed it straight at Jon. “Jon Stark avenged the Red Wedding! He is the White Wolf… _The King in the North!_ ”

“Deepwood Motte was taken by the Ironborn. I know what it means to lose one’s home to a usurper,” Robett Glover said shamefully, prodded by his brother, “Yet I did not fight beside you on the battlefield, and I will regret that until my dying day. A man can only admit when he is wrong and beg forgiveness.”

“I wish every day I had been there with Robb,” Jon said sadly. “There is nothing to forgive, my Lord.”

“There will be more wars to come, from the North _and_ the South!” Galbart Glover declared, drawing his sword. “But so long as the men of Deepwood Motte still draw breath, as long as our arms have the strength to bear our swords and our banner still flies, House Glover shall stand behind House Stark, as we have for a thousand years!” He looked at Jon with fire in his eyes. “And I shall follow Jon Stark. _The King in the North!_ ”

Lady Dustin did not seem as enthused to kneel to the Starks, but her nephew and heir, little Ronnet Dustin, and her chief vassal, Lord Harwood Stout, raised their swords. “The King in the North!” they shouted.

“The King in the North,” she begrudgingly conceded, her voice lost under the chants of the Dustin men.

The GreatJon approached the high table, his beady eyes staring through Jon. Ghost sat up and bared his teeth in a silent snarl – he was almost as tall as the GreatJon now. “I have not enough fingers to again challenge a wolf of Winterfell,” the GreatJon laughed, a booming sound that rattled the table. “Jon Stark! The White Wolf! The King in the North!” the GreatJon bellowed, placing a crown of iron and bronze – _Robb’s crown_ – on Jon’s head. “The King in the North!”

“I am no kneeler, Jon Stark,” Tormund Giantsbane said. “I did not kneel for Mance, and I will not kneel for you. I will sing no songs and do no dances, and I’ll not call you King or Targaryen, but I’ll follow you to the ends of the known world and beyond.” His sons and the rest of the Free Folk cheered and howled and pounded their horns on the tables.

“Stark,” Wun Wun rumbled, pointing his arm at Jon.

“The Jon!” shouted the Northern Mountain Clans of Flint and Norrey and Wull, of Liddle and Knott and Burley and Harclay, swords and axes in the air. "The King in the North!"

“The King in the North!” shouted Stannis Baratheon’s men. Justin Massey reluctantly raised his sword in agreement. "The King in the North!"

“The King in the North! The King in the North!” shouted the men of House Tallhart and House Hornwood and House Ashwood and House Woods and House Woolfield and all the rest…

“Jon,” Val said as he looked over the Hall, at the men and women swearing to him. _Not King Crow or Lord Snow or Jaehaerys Targaryen… Jon. Jon Stark._ She laced her fingers with his and smiled with a warmth he had never seen from her. _Together,_ Jon thought, recalling their previous conversation in the Godswood, under the Heart Tree. _In the sight of the Old Gods, we shall do this together._

_"The King in the North!"_

All around the Great Hall, men raised large poles with Val’s new banner, the new banner of House Stark. White wolves raced across black fields on the walls of Winterfell, Jon could see through the window. Banners flew from every possible point to show to the Seven Kingdoms that the Starks of Winterfell had returned. _Sansa, Arya, Bran… Wherever they are. They can come home now._

_"The King in the North! The King in the North!"_

Jon and Val rose as the chants grew in volume and fervor, until it was so loud, he thought the Wall might fall.

_“The King in the North! The King in the North! The King in the North!”_

**Author's Note:**

> Admittedly, a lot of this is wishful thinking, but hey. I can dream, right? I was planning to write a much darker story, and I wanted to write something optimistic.


End file.
